The Minecraft Movie Trailer Ruined My Week
Hollywood must enjoy torturing me. Right? Right?!?! When I opened my eyes this morning and took my first sip of coffee, the first image I saw was Jason Momoa in a cheap wig and a pink leather jacket, as if he were vomited out of a deleted scene from Barbie. What horrific chain of events placed this image on my screen today? Well, Momoa is the star of the latest (and certainly not greatest) video-game adaptation: A Minecraft Movie.
In the first trailer for the film, the actor formerly known as Aquaman is featured alongside a trifecta of nonsense. There’s disturbingly rectangular sheep, a truly shameful use of the Beatles’ “Magical Mystery Tour,” and peak standing-in-front-of-a-green-screen-style acting. Momoa’s character is seemingly sucked into the world of Minecraft with Emma Myers (Wednesday), Sebastian Eugene Hansen (Just Mercy), and Danielle Brooks (The Color Purple). Plus, Warner Bros. clearly coughed up whatever chunk of cash it took to get an obligatory Jack Black appearance in 2024. He’s playing Steve, the franchise’s silent main character and stand-in for the player. Here, Steve’s probably a man trapped inside the world of Minecraft who will help our characters on their quest to escape.
Despite adaptations constantly using the Whoops, I got trapped in the game! plot for their films, it might surprise you that no one’s ever been sucked into a video game, Jumanji-style. It honestly baffles me why this trend continues, as if video games didn’t already have stories. You’d think that Minecraft—the highest-selling video game of all time!—would’ve changed some of the preconceived notions held by certain important creatives and C-suite dwellers. After all, the pixelated crafting game shares more in common with Lego sets than it does action-adventure comedies. And yet it seems as if Gen X still hasn’t evolved its concept of what video games are beyond...Jumanji.
It’s easy to see where the confusion began. Like many magical worlds, Minecraft is a haven of creativity. As Jack Black says in the trailer, “Anything you can dream about in this world, you can make.” I’ve seen Minecraft players use their imaginations to build entire cities, realistic maps, and even a functioning computer. But in A Minecraft Movie, the characters will apparently try using their imaginations to find a way out of that magical world? Why?!? Remember the Super Mario Bros. Movie that didn’t feature a single human being and grossed more than a billion dollars? Zero lessons learned.
We’ll find out what other horrible abominations await us when A Minecraft Movie premieres in theaters on April 4, 2025. Maybe that’s enough time for science to invent a way to wipe these images from my mind.
